Yikes….lots of colors. This was the last manicure I did with my really long nails. After this started chipping, I trimmed them down to a more manageable length, no more hitting two keys at a time while typing! Here’s the finished nail art…

ROUND 4

Nail art 4, which is on my nails as I type I defiantly love. It’s super sparkly, and I’ve gotten quite a few compliments on it in the short time I’ve had it on…It might have something to do with the fact that my nails are all perfectly the same length right now, having cut them down…but maybe…I’m not sure.

This one is a red and green glitter fade into a nude. I used both polish and cosmetic glitter to obtain this, as strangely enough I’m lacking a red clear base glitter in my collection…no seriously! I was pretty shocked!

I painted just the very tip a solid color, then sponged up about a quarter of the way before covering the nail with the glitter to create the ombre glitter effect.

I really really love how the finished product turned out. One of my favorite things about glitter tips is how long it lasts. I should be able to get a week plus wear out of this mani if I choose to…however there’s so much more to do before the end of the month! Anywho, here’s the finished product.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this one. When I thought up the idea, I felt it’d be a fun different candy cane design, and I don’t know, in practice I’m not sure I’m digging it. I think it’s the thumb that’s bugging me the most, but I haven’t quite narrowed it down yet. Either way, I figured I’d document this.

First holiday nails of December!! I love how this frozen-tipped mani turned out. I really feel like it’s snow-covered. I had a bit of difficulty getting the ombre effect right on this one, mostly because the shift from blue to white needed to be quick. I achieved this by using a solid white base, then at the cuticle placing the blue and blotching it towards the white. About halfway down I used a sheer paler blue, then dabbed in more white. Topped with a multi-sized circle glitter and BAM! I really love this. Not only is it “winter holiday” appropriate, but it’s also Frozen themed appropriate…and it matches the white and blue holiday decore on my desk at work! HA!

My nails are so long right now, I’m not use to them. I’m very torn between cutting them down, and leaving them long. They’re such great canvases right now!! I feel almost bad cutting them with all the adorable holiday inspiration about! It’s getting harder to type though…so they may be getting a trim.

For some reason, this was not the easiest nail art to photograph, and no matter what I tried, it just didn’t take well. That makes me sad, in person this is so so pretty!

It’s been hard for me to get inspired lately when it comes to blogging and nail art. I’m trying to get back into it with product reviews and what not as I find them. What inspired this was actually me coming across a new product…I’m not sure how new it is, as things aren’t usually cutting edge in my little town here. So, it’s new to me, and that’s all that matters, more on it later though.

I wanted to try a little something different. I’m not sure why exactly I thought about turkey feathers, but I did. Thanksgiving and all coming up, I’m sure it had something to do with it.

Products Used:

I <3 Nail Art Pen- Sally Hansen in Noir, OOC Cosmetics in Fondue, China Glaze Roughish Red and Sunshine Pop, X-Treme Wear-Sally Hansen in Sun Kissed, and L’Oreal in The Temptress Power (base color). Not sure how I really feel about how they turned out, but people seemed to like them at work. So I’ll roll with it.

Alrighty, so I was not so subtly urged to check out Drew Berrymore’s cosmetic’s line by a fellow dance sister (Achem…Celeste.) She was excited about the products, and asked if I had heard about them or seen them yet. I hadn’t, but I did check out the press info she sent me and decided I might as well check out the line. I like Drew Berrymore after all.
Flower is carried exclusively at Wal-Mart, and is promoted as being a high end type of cosmetic for a low end price. It’s also cruelty free, and all the good stuff. All the colors are also named after flowers, or have pun-flower names.
You can check out the Flower line at flowerbeauty.com or walmart.com/flower.
My closest super center carries the line, and it did take me a bit of hunting to find the end cap with the products. I was sort of surprised, as I was expecting more of a permanent area in cosmetics. This leads me to believe it’s a trial run for Flower in Wal-Mart stores since they hadn’t bothered to rearrange their plan-o-grams for Drew.
I was also expecting more products. The press release didn’t go into the individual products, but the line as a whole. I got the impression there would be a full cosmetics line including face powders and shadows….I was wrong, or at least wrong for my local store. Which sort of made me bummed until I checked out walmart.com. Indeed, there is a full line of cosmetics from BB Creams to shadow quads. Most of the colors however are what I like to call “safe bets”. Browns and grey tones, nothing out there or crazy.

Mini Flower Haul

So I picked up the following products from my local super store…
2 Nail Lacquers, 1 Volumizing Mascara, and one Lip Butter.

First impressions before I started to explore….
I didn’t care for the Nail Lacquer bottles at first. They have those annoying square caps that never line back up right, so I was annoyed at this…until I realized you can actually remove the white cap with ease (it pops right off leaving a little plastic nubby) and line it back up with the bottle!! GOOD MOVE DREW!
I really liked the packaging for the lip butter at first. It’s cute and girly, and very eye catching.
The mascara packaging I don’t have strong feelings for either way. It’s green, and reminds me of a leaf. It’s neither difficult to use, or easy. Feels fairly generic in your hands, that’s not a bad thing.

So lets talk about the polishes first.

April Showers and Good Bud-dy

I tried the aqua color Good Bud-dy first. It goes on a bit streaky, and for sure you need to use two coats for fullish opaqueness. Even with two coats, it’s more of a jelly finish and you can see your nail line beneath the color. With how the polish went on, I was a little worried the quality and wear of the polish, even more so since I had spent 6.95 on it.
I was pleasantly surprised at the length of wear I got out of this! I tested the polish using a base coat of Sache Vite and no top coat. With just this combo, the manicure lasted a week! No real chips or flakes! I was shocked! How awesome is that?! Now, this isn’t so say the polish remained perfect. The tips did show some wear or “shrinkage” which isn’t noticeable unless you look up close, and most people aren’t checking out your nails that closely. Oddly enough, where it did start to chip was actually by the cuticle as the nail grew.

Quick color swatch.

I tested the dark dark blue April Showers next. I’ve mixed feelings about the color in general, I don’t hate it and I don’t love it…I’m in a neutral limbo. The color is one of those dark blues (A couple people have said they see green in it too.) that’s almost black. It has a unique finish on it’s own. It’s not matte, but it’s also not super shiny, and I dig that. I’ve been wearing this color for about five days now, and it’s holding up just as well as Good Bud-dy has! I even broke my tumb nail, and I assumed the polish would start chipping, it hasn’t! Not one bit.
Over all I’m very impressed with the quality of the polish. It’s worth the nearly 7 dollars I paid per polish. The length of wear is amazing, and I would for sure buy more in the future. The colors from the collection are over all nice, ranging from nudes to bold colors with lots of reds and pinks. If I didn’t already have most dupe colors in the collection, I’d jump on this line. The one thing I can say against the polishes is that they lack unique colors. Also, there’s no shimmers or glitter colors, so if that’s your thing…sorry! I should also mention removal of the polish is a breeze!

Princess and the Paeony

On to the Lip Service Lip Butter…I got the shade Princess and the Paeony LB4…mostly because the name was adorable. It’s a medium-warm pink-mauve shade with a silver sheen. It has a faint fragrance that reminds me of cosmetics I had in my youth. (It smells like the DiC released Sailor Moon lipstick and compact to be exact! Don’t hate…that pearly lip gloss was amazing!) It’s a very light rose scent with a note of vanilla to dull it down. Honestly, it could have done with out the fragrance but that’s just me. I’m one of those people that never sees the point to my face smelling like flowers. You can also taste the fragrance and it’s a bit off putting…much less so than Benefit Cosmetic’s Benetint. The fragrance tastes just like it smells.

Color Swatch

The wear on the lip butter is about average, there’s nothing that sticks out in greatness about it. The price point is the same as the polishes at just about seven dollars minus a few cents. It does condition the lips as well, so that’s a bonus.

Package Size vs. Actual Product.

Now here’s what I dislike greatly about the Lip Butters. Where as the packaging is super cute, I think it’s wasteful for a product that’s cruelty free and seems to be striding for planet goodness. You get very little product for the price. The package is bulky, and then the product is in this teeny little tube inside. It’s pretty damn wasteful and very deceiving I won’t be buying the lip butter again for that reason, good color pay off or not.
Colors are also pretty generic, but I was impressed with the number of pink shades, but unimpressed with the options of other colors.
On a final note about the lip butters, the top is pretty hard to get off, which is and isn’t a bad thing. It’s nice to know the top won’t come loose in your purse, but if you have trouble opening things you’re going to find this to be a pain.

Knockout Volumizing Mascara

Lastly, I picked up the Lash Knockout Volumizing Mascara in Black..which I got by accident. I had wanted the brown one as I am seriously lacking in brown mascara.

Mascara Color Swatch

The mascara smells like mascara, which was a relief. The formula is pretty generic, I didn’t notice anything super special about it upon application. It goes on easily and smoothly.
I noticed when it gets on your skin, it’s easily removed by gently brushing it away with your finger tips, and smears very little. This is a bonus. The Lash Knockout does what it claims, it does make your lashes thicker and longer, with a noticeable difference from your bare lashes. It also doesn’t clump your lashes together, so that’s pretty great too.
I didn’t notice any serious flaking through the day! So this is a serious bonus…I really hate when my mascara flakes.
Removal is easy, but please note…I didn’t purchase a waterproof mascara, so keep that in mind.
Prices for the Mascaras run about average or a bit below for most drug-store brands coming in at about 8 dollars.

So my final thoughts…
Over all the price is good for the product, except for the Lip Butters. I really wish there was more product to be had for your dollar.
Packaging is adorable.
The quality of the line is very good, I was super impressed with it.
I was floored by the quality of the nail polish! Worth every damn penny!
So, buy the polish, pass on the lip butter, and if you need a new mascara and are looking for a cruelty free product, this is a great option but only buy if you’re needing a new mascara…
But seriously…A+++ on the polishes! Did I mention that yet??

I used no white…the white bottle is a lie… Checkered Nail art. Jessie’s Girl in Fierce and Fab(neon purple) and China Glaze’s Kinetic Candy.

Simple tip…which I’ve done before. Dress Me Up by China Glaze with a tip of Catch Me In Your Net by OPI.

What did I do when I got home from Pennsic?? Painted my nails and ate the rest of my stash of Macarons!!! Light to dark blue fade.

China Glaze’s new Bohemian Collection in Deavently Daring…It looked more duo-chrome in the bottle, but it is still pretty, very. I picked up the little stars at Five Below.

This is mostly from the new Revlon Moon Candy collection, with the accent nail from China Glaze- Hook n Line from the Hunger Games collection. I really really dislike the base color that comes with the duo polish. This duo is called Cosmic. The base is a green-brown color, and it takes 3 coats to get it that opaque. It’s a color that I describe as “If farts had a color, this would be it.” The top layer is a limey-yellow flaky which I really love over anything but the green-farts color.

Pagan Pride 2012 nails…I wanted to do purple to represent Spirit…Purple is the Pride color, so hey. It seemed to work…I used a Profusion no name color for the dark purple, and the lavender is Lilacism by Essie. Top coat is from the Revlon Moon Candy collection in Cosmic.

Lastly…we have Deavently Daring by China glaze with tips of LA Splash cosmetic glitter. The name escapes me on this one, as the sticker on the bottom has come off the little pot. But it’s a black/grey silvery glitter, and I love it.

I wish I had pictures to share of the product on my nails…but it didn’t happen…you’ll see why.

So I was heading off to Pennsic war this year, and unlike last year I wasn’t able to afford to have the lovely and talented Gina Cella give my nails a mighty shellacking. I was able to afford the inexpensive store-solution to the shellack manicure, aka Gel-Polish.
I found boxes on sale at Marc’s, 2 for 9 dollars, with a 2 dollar off coupon. Quite the deal, so I decided to give it a whirl…I wanted color that would last the week with no chips, and make my nails stronger so I didn’t break them all in the Pennsic wilderness.

I followed all the directions on the box, washed my hands, removed extra oil and dirt with 100% acetone no less…and then I got to work while watching Labyrinth….ahh…David Bowie…and I still say that’s a potato in his pants…
ANYWHO…

With the Gel polishes, you lay down a coat of something called an activator that looks, smells, and acts like super glue, then quickly mix in the polish color with the glue. Let it dry, and repeat cleaning off the paintbrush ever 5 fingers. Easy enough…and away I go…

The application process was easy, no doubt. And quick too…but you have to be SOOO super careful not to get it on your skin or cuticle, and quite frankly, the brushes that come with the bottles don’t exactly lend to the ability for precise application. The brush for the activator looked cheap, was brittle, and looked as if a toddler had been painting their nails, the bristles were just everywhere.
It was a huge pain in the ass to go back and remove the glue from my fingers…I’m lucky I use 100% acetone and have cosmetic Q-tips sitting around…Plain polish remover wouldn’t have cut it.

The polish did dry quickly…that’s a true claim. And you don’t need a top coat, although I did want one. I wasn’t happy with the semi-matte pretty much blah finish. I put a top coat on to see what would happen, it peeled right off. Although I wasn’t impressed with the matte of the polish, I was impressed with the color. I used 12304 Quickstep, which is…surprise surprise a teal.

I woke up the next morning, showered and went about finishing the last few things I had to do to prepare for Pennsic, and got into the car, looked down…and saw a chip. What the hell? It hadn’t even been 8 entire hours. I also noticed on one of my nails a little bump…as I was driving, I was picking at the bump, hoping it was just on the surface when an entire chunk of the polish on that finger popped off. Not talking a tiny chip here, no like half the nail…HALF.

When this stuff chips, it’s not a small imperfection…it’s a HUGE MASSIVE COMPLETELY NOTICEABLE OMFG LOOK AT ME chunk! I can’t STAND chips in my polish….of course I freaked out and spent the next 2 hours while driving picking at it and popping the rest of the polish off that nail…I was smart enough to bring the gel-set with me, and I fixed it while at a diner waiting for lunch.

Needless to say, the rest of the week didn’t go so well for the Gel-Perfect polish. I started off Sunday repairing the chips that had happened while moving things into my tent, and the same with Monday. By Tuesday I was trying out a new trend, 2 nails with no polish, 3 with…and by Wednesday morning the polish had been chipped from every nail quite easily…yes…it was terrible for my nails…but I really couldn’t stand it anymore and had run out of the acetone I had with me.

It couldn’t survive a shower. A SHOWER. One. Shower.

I’ll never waste my money on this crap again…honestly, just visit your trusted salon, or better yet visit Gina at Mod. You’ll pay 3 times more yes, but the quality of the product and results will be worth it. There’s nothing I hate more than wasting money. Uch.

Product Fail!! Didn’t even last long enough for me to snap a picture!!!